


after all is said and done i feel the same

by spock



Category: Wolverine (Movies)
Genre: Age Difference, Birds of a Feather, Canon Compliant, Living Vicariously, M/M, Secret Relationship, Villains
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-11 07:09:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16471067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spock/pseuds/spock
Summary: Donald's got this theory that people don't ever really change. He himself being the rule, rather than an exception.





	after all is said and done i feel the same

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Hecate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hecate/gifts).



> i couldn't believe someone besides me shipped these two! i hope that you like this ♥ i figure that there's about a 15 year age difference between them; rictor is something like 17 when they first kiss, and whereabouts 19 or 20 during the events of the film? x-men and their screwy timelines will be the death of me, but i think I got things worked out for this, plus or minus a year.

Donald’s entire sixth grade year is comprised of a grand total of 60 students spread across two classes. About a handful of 'em go on and on about Harry Potter and Hogwarts whenever they’re given free reign during the English Lit hours of the day. The rest never actually bother to read, and Mrs. Reese seems to prefer ‘em for it.

The only letter Donald wants is from Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. A day doesn’t go by where he isn’t praying for some mutation to develop. He doesn’t care if it’s so insignificant that he’ll never use it for anything worthwhile, or so disastrous that he’d never lead a normal life again, he just wants _something_ to get him out of this town, to get him there, with his heroes.

Joining the X-Men is just about all that Donald dreams of. A family that so much as pretends to tolerate him and being rich is up there, sure, but the X-Men seem a more realistic goal.

Middle school comes and goes with all signs pointing to high school being much the same. Donald’s hopes and dreams die in a small town that, in his estimation, exists solely to accomplish such things. 

There’s not gonna be any wheelchaired telepath rolling in to save Donald from a fate that’s surely worse than death; his father’s beatings growing in intensity the older Donald gets, jobs in the area dried up even worse than the dirt has, Donald neither smart nor connected enough to swing his way into college. He’ll have to save himself.

Military it is, then.

 

#

Donald’s one of the earliest subjects for what sets the stage for Alkali-Transigen’s eventual schemes, though he isn’t privy to that at the time.

He does so well in the service that he sticks with it even after his four years are up, and loses an arm for his trouble.

Dazed and drifting just around the edges of consciousness, the part of himself Donald long thought dead hopes that a mutation will be triggered by all this suffering. Maybe Donald’s a little bit like a lizard, and it’ll take losing a limb for him to know that he can grow them back at will. That certainly sounds like one of those fringe X-Men powers, and Donald would still take a z-list mutation over having none at all.

It isn’t so much losing the arm that gets him down. It’s the thought of being discharged out the service. Donald has jack-shit nothing if he doesn’t have this.

Luckily enough for him, Congress just approved a defense contract with Alkali-Transigen a few weeks prior, and they’re giddier than a pig in grease for some test subjects. Donald signs the papers with his remaining hand and dreams about waking up like Wolverine.

He doesn’t, but it isn’t as if Donald doesn’t go way back with disappointment. They’re old pals, the longest relationship Donald’s ever had. Mutants are hardly even being born these days, anyway. Donald’s odds of spontaneously developing powers have to be even lower now than they’d been before. His body doesn’t reject the arm and he breezes through rehab, stronger than he’d been before the whole unfortunate mess even took place. As a whole, Donald considers it a win, failed mutation notwithstanding.

“Pierce,” his CO says to him, right about the time that he’s set to be cleared for active duty. “A-T’s looking to take you out on loan. How’d you feel about that?”

No isn’t a word that really goes in the military. Course, Donald’s only ever wanted to move up in the world, and this isn’t the type of thing you say no to if that’s your endgame.

“Peachy-keen, sir.”

 

#

They don’t bring Donald in as Chief of Security until there’s something that needs securing. Rice hasn’t said much about what was going on in their facility down in Mexico, not even after Donald had gathered up the nerve to just come out and ask, point-blank direct-like.

“Seeing is believing,” Rice had said.

Donald’s looking, but he isn’t quite certain what it is he’s supposed to see. Bunch of rugrats locked up like animals, but that isn’t anything new to him, not in his line of work. He watches a little boy get dragged into the bottom level of the operating theatre they’ve got set up here. His handler pulls the collar from the boy’s neck and then hauls ass out the room.

Rice walks up to the little intercom box next to the window that walls off their spectator's box and says, “Ahora enseñale al Señor Pierce como tu control a mejorado.”

The kid shoots goddamn fire from his fingers. Donald’s heart seizes right up into his throat. “Hot damn,” he says.

 

#

At some point Donald really got himself believing that he wasn’t a snob about mutations. Not that he’s ever had anyone to talk with about these things, but going off the hypothetical that he had, Donald would have argued that any power was a good power until the cows came home. Donald’s someone who enjoys arguing and being ornery, which might have also played into it, but the point still holds.

Faced with what are likely the last mutants here on god’s green earth, Donald’s found that he’s got some capital-o Opinions about these things; some of the kids are so pathetic that he doesn’t know why they don’t put ‘em out of their misery and save the facility on food and board. ‘course, not all are that bad. He’s got a couple favorites.

 _A_ favorite, anyways.

X23-11 is of a similar temperament to Donald, which Donald happens to find hilarious, but it means that kid keeps finding himself in a buttload of trouble. His childhood had been run through on fast forward, just like Donald’s had, ‘cept X23-11 hadn’t seemed to get whatever mutation it is that has people seeing sense and utilizing self-preservation. He’s the same make and model that Donald had at his age, a scrawny li'l thing with a perpetual black eye that never gets a chance to heal up before the kid does something that earns him another.

It gets so bad that Donald has to take over as the kid’s personal transport guard, more for X23-11’s safety than the for guards’, though that certainly is a factor. The only real difference between them two is that X23-11 has geokinesis, a mutation Donald knows the name for only because after a certain age, and living through hell as he had, he came to the realization that he liked Magneto way more than Professor X, and Avalanche quickly shot up the ranks to become one of his favorites.

Donald would probably trade places with the kid, if given the opportunity, even with a mutant’s existence as bleak as it is these days. That ain’t possible though, so Donald lets himself be glad that his growth spurt had kicked in when he was whereabouts X23-11’s age. DNA has granted Donald a victory on that front if nothing else.

Geokinesis is one of the top-tier powers, is the point, and Donald doesn’t want X23-11’s attitude problem to get him killed by same cowboy guard acting too big for his britches while pissants like that one reptile kid make it through.

“Us bastards gotta stick together,” Donald says to him. The kid is fresh out of isolation, but who knows how long that’ll stick. “Ain’t that right, trouble?”

X23-11 stares at him, face hard and defensive, like he thinks Donald’s making fun of him. “Trouble is a better name than X23-11,” Donald says, “and I’m sorry to break it to you sweetheart, but we don’t get to pick our nicknames.”

If anything X23-11 stares harder. His cheeks start pinkin’ up and his hands ball up into fists. He looks — embarrassed, sorta.

It’s then that Donald realizes that the kid doesn’t speak a lick of English.

That’s alright. Donald can work with that.

 

#

Language lessons with X23-11 are something of a mixed bag. Things at the facility have hit homeostasis and Donald’s days are moving at snail’s pace down the boring side of monotonous. Rice leaves most everything under his watch when it comes to the day-to-day; with no boss to answer to, all Donald’s got to eat up the hours is this.

He’s teaching the kid through immersion, which is to say that Donald is talking at him a whole lot and hoping some of it sticks. The kid doesn’t talk back enough for Donald to have any real idea of how that’s going. Or talk at all, really.

“Trouble,” Donald says, once he’s started running out of things to say, something which hasn’t never happened before in his life. “Don’t you have anything you’d like to say to me? It doesn’t even gotta be a sentence, at this point. We sure you aren’t deaf?”

“Fuck you,” X23-11 says. “Don’t call me that.”

Donald can’t imagine a better pair of first words.

“Now that isn’t much better than a sharp stick in the eye, but boy, I’ll take it,” Donald says. “Who taught you how to speak like that?”

“You,” the kid says, after he’s just about rolled his eyes all the way into the back of his head. Donald knows X23-11 picked that habit up from him too.

“Well, do you remember me teachin’ you the phrase _thank you_?” he asks.

Donald doesn’t know if something got lost in translation there or if X23-11 really doesn’t have an ounce of respect for Donald, but the kid laughs. Really, truly laughs in a way that lights up his whole gorgeous face. For all Donald knows, it’s the first time he’s laughed in his entire, miserable life, but all Donald’s thinking about is that he would have given up anything to make a boy that looked like X23-11 laugh like this back when he was X23-11’s age.

 

#

There are times when X23-11 gets hurt, and Donald’s gotta say, he’s not a fan of the concept.

“That one’s the real deal, Rice,” Donald says, watching as X23-11 gets patched up by one of the nurses. They’re stood in the hallway, watching the woman work through the glass window in the door. “You shouldn’t be riskin’ him on bullshit trainin' ops. You seen what his powers are? He’s hit a wall. He should be out in the wild.”

“It,” Rice corrects, but he’s got his thinking face on.

The nurse finishes up and speaks to X23-11 for a while, stroking his hair. They can’t hear her through the door, and Donald’s Spanish is so bad that it could be bought for a song that even the most tone-deaf could sing, so lip-reading is out of the question.

“Alright,” Rice says. “I’ll grant you clearance to take X23-11 off the grounds.” He nods at the scene unfolding behind window. “Put an end to that,” he says, and leaves.

“Rictor,” the woman says, just as Donald opens the door. Her mouth clamps shut and she yanks her hand back to herself like a scalded haint.

“Looks like he’s all fixed up,” Donald says. “Seems to me like you should get.”

She does.

“So,” Donald says. “Rictor.” It isn’t something he should be encouraging, but X23-11 really is just a god-awful excuse for a name.

“Fuck off,” the kid shoots back at him.

“Boy, you could start an argument in an empty house, you now that?” Donald drops down onto the side of Rictor’s bed and uses his cybernetic arm to ruffle up his hair. “And right when I was fixin’ to give you some good news? Damn shame.”

Rictor swats Donald’s hand away. “What?” he asks, voice thick with suspicion.

Donald moves his hand over his heart. “You don’t trust little ol’ me?” His wounded face doesn’t last long. Donald’s not good at keeping from laughing, most the time. He gives Rictor a light little tap on the cheek and says, “Rest up, I’m takin’ you somewhere tomorrow. And make sure you put on some shoes for once, heathen.”

 

#

Rictor shines once Donald gets him out on a real spread of land, not the little clumps of dirt the technicians have been having the kid practice on.

“Attaboy!” Donald shouts. He’s sitting on the bed of the truck he drove them out there in. Beside him is a gun with bullets that’ll go right through Rictor’s skull. Donald’s sure he won’t have to use it. These kids don’t know what freedom is, nevermind that they ain’t got it. He’s smiling like a goat in a briarpatch as he watches Rictor do his thing. Rictor looks back at him and returns it.

Donald’s feeling antsy, suddenly. Just can’t bring himself to sit still. He hops off the truck and jogs over to Rictor so he can take him by the shoulders, shove him around a little. Rictor laughs and shoves him right back. Once a man, twice a child, Donald figures, and that’s his excuse for kicking Rictor’s legs out from under him and not putting up much of a fight as Rictor drags Donald down with him.

The roll around a ways until Rictor comes up victorious, sitting on top of Donald.

“Uncle,” Donald crows. And then, because it’s eating at his mind, “How come you didn’t use any of your powers?”

Rictor looks at him like he’s crazy. “I don’t want you _dead_ ,” he says.

“I think that’s just about the sweetest thing anyone's ever said to me,” Donald teases. The sad fact of it all is that it’s likely true.

Rictor’s face pinks up and Donald realizes that the kid’s pants are a little tight. It surprises him, but Donald’s mama, in her more lucid moments, few as they were, always did used to say that there wasn’t a pot so crooked that a lid wouldn’t fit. It would be exactly Donald’s luck to have Rictor turn out to be his lid, so to speak.

Donald gets the heels of hit boots stuck into the dirt and uses the leverage to flip them so that Rictor’s on his back with Donald leaning over him. “You go right on ahead and kill me if this ain’t to your liking,” Donald says to him, before ducking down to lick straight into Rictor’s slightly-parted lips.

He’s aware that Rictor has never seen kissing in his life and has no first-hand knowledge on the subject besides, but the kid does alright at picking up what Donald does to him and doing it right back to Donald.

“How’s that?” Donald asks once they’re finished. Rictor doesn’t say anything, and so Donald leans back in to take a nip to Rictor’s lip, blood welling up where Donald’s gold tooth nicked the skin. It feels like he’s struck oil, the way his heart’s all expanded in his chest the way it is.

Rictor’s breathing hard and the button on his pants looks damn-near like it’s about ready to pop off with how hard his dick is on the other side of it. He brings a hand to his mouth to dab at the blood, tongue darting’ out to taste it. “I think I’m dying,” Rictor says.

“It’s just a flesh wound, baby.” Donald decides to take some pity on him, though it ain’t like it’ll be much of a sacrifice on his end.

He rolls off Rictor and back into the dirt, laying on his back. He undoes his fly and fishes himself out the hole in his underwear. “C’mon now. I know exactly the fix you’re needin’, just do like I do.”

 

#

“What exactly are the X-Men?” Rictor asks one day, as Donald’s walking him through the hallway to his weekly physical.

Donald tenses up and looks around wildly to make sure nobody heard what was just said. “Hush up now, boy,” he hisses.

Rictor’s quiet the rest of the way there and on the walk back. Donald follows Rictor inside his room and closes the door behind him. “Just where the hell did that come from?” he asks.

“You used to talk about the X-Men all the time and I realized I have no idea what the fuck that means, is where the hell it came from,” Rictor says. It’s clear he’s still sore from Donald having yelled at him earlier.

Donald’s got some thing’s to be sore over too, if that’s the case. He wasn’t even gonna say anything, and he’s mad at himself for holding back on account of Rictor’s feelings when Rictor clearly isn’t of a mind to do the same. “You sure it doesn’t have anythin’ to do with what I hear tell from Dr. Rice about you teachin’ the other X23s English?” Donald snaps.

Rictor has the good grace to look a fraction cowed at this, at least. “It’s not like we’ve got anything else to talk about,” Rictor says. “Don, you know how it gets in here.”

Donald hates when he calls him that, hates the way it always softens him up to do just about anything Rictor wants. Not that he can, not here, not right now. There’s cameras monitoring all the rooms. He’s lucky they aren’t micced up.

“You cut that out right now,” Donald says. He doesn’t know if he’s talking about the nickname or the English lessons or the X-Men thing. It doesn’t matter, really, seeing as Donald doesn’t have it in him to really make Rictor stop any of the three. He doesn’t want to have to settle things should Rictor actually come out and tell him no.

 

#

The next time he takes Rictor out to train, Donald brings along his comic books. They’ve developed a routine for days like these, and it goes a little something like this: they fool around a bit once they get to the forest, then Rictor fucks shit up for a while to stretch out that mutant brain of his, and then they fool around again some more before packing it in for the day and driving back.

Donald makes sure that they fool around first before he fishes a few issues out from the bag he brought with him and hands ‘em over to Rictor.

“This,” Donald says, “is the X-Men.”

Letting Rictor see ‘em was probably a mistake, but Donald hadn’t known that at the time.

Or maybe he had, but hadn’t given a damn either way.

 

#

When the call comes down from management, Donald can’t in all good conscience say it’s a surprise.

Child soldiers are an investment that rarely yields a return, not even superpowered ones. Most likely _especially_ not superpowered ones. Donald could have told ‘em that, but nobody ever cared to ask his opinion and he’s long known to leave well enough alone and let these things run their course.

It’s a weeklong process that goes orderly for a while, that is until the kids start noticing that they haven’t seen their friends in a while.

Donald prefers dragging the X23s in to be put down. Something about it feels more honest. It doesn’t come close to being the worst shit he’s done, anyhow. He does it all without complaint or thinking too much about it. The way Donald sees it, death is a mercy compared to the life they’ve been living. Donald would know.

He’s gonna to be a good soldier and do as he’s told, for the most part. His plan is to save Rictor for last. Rice knows that Rictor’s been Donald’s pet-project, and it just so happens that Rictor’s also the only one to show any real promise. Honey working better than vinegar, and all. Donald thinks he can keep the kid alive for further examination, if nothing else. It’s worth a try, anyway.

If Rictor does has to die, it’ll be by Donald’s hand. Donald owes him that, at the very least.

 

#

Staring down the same fate that Donald once had, looks like Rictor had come to the same conclusion as Donald, and got while the gettin’ was good.

Donald can’t help but find it a little bit funny. In his own roundabout way, he’s ended up a villain in a situation so stupid it coulda been pulled straight out of an X-Men comic.

Donald’s rooting for Rictor and the rest of ‘em to find a way out of this mess they’ve gotten themselves into, even as he gathers up his team to hunt ‘em down.

**Author's Note:**

> p.s. i loved your prompt about donald surviving at the end of the film and now my headcanon is that rictor 100% doubled back and dug donald out of that earth prison. eden could not be safer than if donald was there protecting them, right? so thanks for that. 
> 
> happy halloween ♥


End file.
